‘Citadel’ Is a $300 Million Disaster for Amazon

Imagine for a moment that in the late 2000s, Marvel did not simply announce a movie about Iron Man, but that they would simultaneously go into production on Captain America, Thor, and Avengers films, with even more in immediate development, and that these would be among the most expensive movies ever made. In hindsight, we know this would have worked out well. (Well, maybe not the expense part.) But at the time, no one knew that audiences would be interested in any of these films, let alone that they would kick off the most influential pop-culture brand of the century. If Iron Man had flopped while so many of these other projects were in the works, Marvel might have ceased to exist as a company. 

Amazon’s overall business model is in no danger, as its Prime Video streaming service is basically a rounding error for what’s primarily an online megastore. Nonetheless, the people behind Prime have very much put the franchise cart before the individual series horse with the new spy thriller Citadel, which even boasts some MCU blood in the form of executive producers Joe and Anthony Russo.

Anthony Russo has said that Amazon exec Jen Salke approached the brothers with the idea of launching a big, multiseries spy franchise from scratch. Citadel is just one of many planned shows set in the same fictional universe, with Italian and Indian spinoffs already in the works, while others are in development. The plan is predicated on the idea that audiences will flock not only to this first series — despite a complete lack of the kind of familiar IP that Hollywood now assumes is required for any blockbuster(*) — but then also be eager for as many related shows as Amazon can make for them. And Amazon has bet big on the idea, reportedly spending around $300 million on the show so far — including extensive reshoots after original showrunner Josh Appelbaum was replaced by Hunters creator David Weil — which would bring it in just behind Amazon’s Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power on the list of the costliest series ever produced.

(*) Iron Man wasn’t nearly as well-known as Spider-Man or the X-Men when the first movie came out, but at least some of the moviegoing audience was aware of him.

There is so much presumption involved here than even a transcendent television show could likely justify. And unfortunately, Citadel falls far, far short of transcendence, or even goodness. It is bland, generic, and almost shockingly cheap-looking, given the price tag. There are some minor charms, including the chance to watch stars Priyanka Chopra Jonas and Richard Madden look glamorous together, as well as the usual reliability of supporting players Stanley Tucci and Lesley Manville, so it’s not all bad. But it’s staggering to look at the finished product and understand why Amazon thought that this would be the start of an exponentially lucrative collection of projects.

Citadel, we are eventually told, is a legendary spy organization not loyal to any one government, corporation, or individual. As Tucci’s gadgeteer Bernard explains, they “helped shape every major event for good in the last 100 years.” It’s fair to question a lot about these assertions, particularly since there have been many, many, many events for bad in the last 100 years. Mainly, it seems, Citadel has done battle with Manticore, a rival organization that represents eight of the world’s wealthiest families, and tries to bend global matters to enhance the wealth of its clients. Unlike some of the Russos’ previous subjects, Citadel agents are not superheroes, but they are more or less positioned like Captain America, et al.: forever fighting both supervillains and each other, and never making the world better in any tangible way.

Regardless of whether or not you believe Bernard’s assertions, though, the show’s setup goes out of its way to avoid showing you Citadel at its peak powers. We open with top agents Nadia (Chopra Jonas) and Mason (Madden) on a mission together on a train rushing through the Italian countryside. The pair flirt and banter, then kill a bunch of Manticore agents in a close-quarters action sequence directed well by acclaimed cinematographer Newton Thomas Sigel (Da 5 Bloods). But things go quickly awry, and suddenly it’s eight years later. Mason is calling himself Kyle, with a wife and daughter. He has retrograde amnesia, and remembers nothing of his life as a master spy. Bernard finds him and reveals that Manticore took out all of Citadel in a single day, and he and Mason appear to be the only ones left. (It is not exactly a spoiler to say that Nadia has also survived; the Russos did not hire one of the biggest stars in the world and put her front and center in their marketing for a glorified cameo.) 

So Citadel is a bare-bones operation as the plot really begins, and the storytelling is similarly threadbare. Lots of scenes often involve two or three characters talking in a room. After that opening on the train, the action sequences are usually quick and perfunctory, and sometimes barely even that. The second episode has Bernard coaching Kyle/Mason through a heist at a Manticore facility, and our hero is able to waltz in and out in under five minutes with barely any difficulty at all. Each of the first three episodes clock in at under 40 minutes, and they feel even skimpier than that. It’s often said of expensive film and TV spectacles that, regardless of their other creative merits, you can see the money up there on the screen. Citadel will leave you marveling at how a reported $300 million can be all but invisible to the audience.

The idea of an amnesiac man discovering that he’s really a secret agent is not new, and Citadel at least acknowledges this, with Mason’s wife, Abby (Ashleigh Cummings), joking, “You can’t even remember to put the toilet seat down, and now you’re Jason Bourne?” But the early episodes don’t get nearly as much mileage out of the conceit, mainly using it as an excuse to reveal a series of middling twists. Even after Mason and Nadia reunite in a circumstance where she remembers everything and he remembers nothing, Weil and the rest of the creative team can’t figure out how to have much fun with the concept. What liveliness exists in Citadel comes primarily from Tucci and from Manville, dryly menacing as Dahlia, a British ambassador to America(*) who is secretly a top fixer for Manticore.

(*) If you want to watch a streaming drama involving ambassadors and U.S./U.K. relations, I would strongly suggest you instead check out The Diplomat on Netflix.

As for the leads? Chopra Jonas and Madden are serviceable, but neither pops off the screen in the way they have in other roles. Like most of Citadel, they’re not terrible, but nor are they doing anything worth getting excited about.

This unfortunately makes two franchise — or, in this case, would-be franchise — duds in a row for Madden. He’s coming off of Eternals — a.k.a. the movie Marvel would prefer we never talk about again. Eternals was pretty presumptuous in its own way, gambling that the MCU could launch a new 10-person team, based on a group of characters who have never been commercially successful in print (and have only occasionally been creatively successful there). And at least that was coming after 25 other movies that had all been hits of varying degrees, all of them clearly linked to one another. Citadel is hoping to skip straight to that kind of esteemed, ubiquitous status. Even if the first show was great, there’s no guarantee that audiences would automatically want more. But when the finished product is this forgettable? That’s a problem Amazon might need multiple Infinity Stones to fix.

The first two episodes of Citadel begin streaming April 28 on Amazon Prime Video, with additional episodes releasing weekly. I’ve seen the first three (of six) episodes.

From Rolling Stone US.